The guide

Start or join a band

four steps, one code

1. Install it on every machine that's joining

   Download BandPeer and run the installer - it needs no administrator rights. The first screen asks your name and offers to start a band, join one, or go solo - and solo is a real choice, with everything that doesn't need other people. Then start your 7-day trial (see Licensing the band).

2. Start a band and get a code

   You're handed five ordinary words, picked so they can be shouted across a loud room without sounding like anything else. That's forty bits - and a handful of wrong guesses from one address locks it out for a while.

3. Read the code out to the band

   On their machine, the same first screen takes it under join one - or later, the band name at the top of the window, then start or join another band. On the same wifi you find each other on your own; for a bandmate in another house, see A band in more than one house.

4. Let them in

   They turn up on the Band page, waiting. Approve them and their machine hears about it the next time you're both online - nobody can give themselves a seat, because every row on that page comes from a signed grant.

A band in more than one house

Finding each other on your own only works on the same wifi - a router doesn't let that kind of announcement out. For everyone else, the band's owner switches one thing on:

1. Owner: let bandmates reach this machine

   In Settings › Network, press Check my router to see whether it can open a port - nothing changes yet - then tick Ask my router to let bandmates reach this machine. It's off until you choose it, because it's a decision about your own network.

2. Everyone else: just the code

   Join with the band code as usual. BandPeer looks the band up by its code and finds the owner's machine, wherever it is. Where it lives is stored encrypted with the code, so even bandpeer.com can't read it, and your machine remembers the way back afterwards.

Who can do what

owner, admin, member

Whoever starts the band is its Owner. The owner can make a member an Admin, and an admin can approve or decline ordinary members - never another admin, and never the owner. Every machine works that out for itself from the grants it's been sent. There's no server holding the "real" answer.

Your bio and what you play are yours to say, band by band - the covers band and your own project aren't the same fact about you, so each keeps its own.

Licensing the band

one for the band, one each for the people in it

Everybody has a personal license ($1.99 a month): the practice room, your own library and calendar, and a place in any band that has a band license. Whoever starts the band adds a band license ($3.99 a month): it's what switches on the band - chat, video calls, shared charts and recordings, the band's calendar - for up to ten members, and it includes the owner's own personal license. The owner buys it from their account and pastes its code into Settings › License › Have a code?, and it reaches everyone else the next time they sync. All the details.

A teacher or conductor can use a classroom license ($5.99 a month) instead: everything a band license does, with room for fifty, and two personal licenses included: their own, and an assistant's they choose.

Both come as a 7-day free trial: the owner starts a band trial, and everyone joining starts a personal one.

With nothing covering it, BandPeer opens to the trial and license screen until there is - but it never deletes anything, and Settings › Data will always export your library and calendar.

Share your first chart

drop it, share it, open it

1. Drop it on the Library page

   Drag in as many files as you like - one row each, no dialog. Text files are opened to see what's in them, so a tab saved as .txt is filed as a tab, not lyrics.

2. Share it when it's ready

   Everything you add starts out Private - a rough take can sit in the band's library without the band hearing it. Press Share and it's theirs to fetch; Stop sharing stops your machine handing it out, though it can't take back a copy somebody already has.

3. Fetch what the band has shared

   A bandmate's shared item shows up marked Available. Nothing downloads until you ask - Get file in its details, or Download all above the list - so a practice room's wifi isn't spent on somebody else's decision. You get the file itself, not a link, checked against a hash before it's kept, and an edited row whose file hasn't changed isn't sent twice.

4. Open it where it belongs

   Chords open on the Guitar page with the fretboard lit, a tab in the Tab Player, a recording in Tracks. Anything else opens the way Windows already knows how.

Book the gig

and bring the setlist

A rehearsal or a gig can carry a setlist straight out of the library. Share the date and the songs travel with it, so nobody ends up with a title they can't open.

Around the practice room

seven tools, each keeps its own place

Each tool remembers where it was while you're elsewhere - the metronome keeps counting while you read a chart.

A few things worth knowing

• Tune the guitar down. The Guitar page has its own Tuning - Drop D, Open G and more - and a chord name means what sounds, so a G in Open G is shown as the shape you'd actually play there. The Tab Player's tuning works the other way round: the frets stay as written and the pitches follow.
• Get a tab in from anywhere. The Tab Player lists the band's tabs. Drop a file on it, or select a tab on a web page and drag it straight over - it's filed in the library, ready to share. Chord sheets drop onto the Guitar page the same way.
• Longer loops. Pick one to four Bars on the Looper. Growing a loop repeats what you've written, which is where a variation starts.
• Choose the click. The Metronome's Sound list has woodblock, claves, cowbell, hi-hat and more, from your SoundFont and built in.
• Your keys, your kit. On the Drums page, Assign keys lets you click a drum and press the key you want for it.

Sounds

Use a SoundFont you already have, or the one in the box. The Keyboard and Guitar pages each keep their own instrument and volume, so a piano on one never turns the other into a piano too.

Found a SoundFont the band should hear? Settings › Devices lists the ones on your machine, each with Share beside Use. Your bandmates see it in the same list, with Download until it's on their machine. Only share one whose license lets you pass it on.

Talk, and ring each other

no server in the conversation

Message the band or one person. A direct message exists only on the two machines it names.

1. Check your camera and mic first

   Check camera and mic, at the top of the Chat page, shows your picture exactly as a call sends it and a level for your microphone. Record a few seconds and it plays them back the way your bandmates will hear you.

2. Ring them

   Each person in Chat's list has their own call button, lit when they're online and in the band - hover a greyed one to see why. Their call window opens on its own, sealed like everything else, with echo cancellation so speakers work as well as headphones.

3. Know which button does what

   Mute mic and Camera off are your end - they stop the other side hearing or seeing you. Volume is them, in your speakers. Closing the window hangs up.

Always there, never in the way

the tray, and new versions

Closing the window leaves BandPeer running in the tray by the clock, so chat, calls and approvals still reach you - right-click the tray icon and choose Quit BandPeer to really close it. Settings › Network can turn that off, or have BandPeer start with Windows, in the tray, so the band can reach you without anyone opening it.

The top right of the window shows which version you're on, and says Update available when there's a newer one here. Clicking it opens the download page - BandPeer never downloads or installs anything by itself, and Tell me when a new version of BandPeer is out in Settings › Network turns the check off.

Still stuck?

Send us a message - we can figure this out together.